


Room to Think

by TheWhiteLily



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character perspective on a canon scene, Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, Gen, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock's Mind Palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-18 22:17:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13109616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWhiteLily/pseuds/TheWhiteLily
Summary: Sherlock seeks help to deal with a traumatic problem.





	Room to Think

**Author's Note:**

> For fan_flashworks 'office'

“No,” Sherlock told the woman in the white dress firmly. He turned away before the gun could fire…

…and his mind palace collapsed. Again.

He was sitting in his chair. In 221B. Alone.

It should have been a safe place to enter his mind palace, so he could to work out what to _do_. It _was_ a safe place—but for the recurring sequence of images that hijacked his every attempt to begin.

He needed… help. Someone to act as a mouthpiece for the thing inside him that kept dragging Mary to the front of his mind, the thing that made her presence too distracting to focus on the problem at hand: what to do about _John_.

He needed someone to play the role John did, someone who could say the obvious things so that Sherlock didn’t have to waste time thinking them. And he needed to distract Mary: he needed somewhere Sherlock’s subconscious would assume she was safe and alive and happy while he tried to work out what to _do_ , now that she was dead, and John hated him.

He started with the church. The bride; the wedding guests; John, glowing with happiness on the biggest and most important day of his life. (It  _was_.) He added a mezzanine floor near to the vaulted ceiling and brought himself there, chair and all.

And, reluctantly, brought a guest as well.

A room where the walls stopped two feet above the floor might not be quite believable as a private psychologist’s office; nor was the vaulted ceiling and fractured, unevenly coloured light from the half-covered stained glass window of a converted church.  But least here, there was no woman in white, dark red despair and failure blossoming over her chest as her heart—John’s heart— _Sherlock’s_ heart pumped out its lifeblood.

A different woman sat across from Sherlock, one who had known John almost as well as Mary.

“You’ve been having dreams,” prompted Ella Thompson. “A recurring dream?”

That wasn’t worthy of a response; idiots always focused on the wrong problem. Mary had died; died saving Sherlock, after he’d _sworn_ he would keep her safe.

“D’you want to talk about it?” she tried again.

He needed to think how to fix this: how to make John understand he was sorry, how to make everything better, how to make John happy again. 

“This is a two-way relationship, you know.”

Assuming it was _possible_ to fix this.

“The whole world has come crashing down around you. Everything’s hopeless, irretrievable.”

Sherlock scowled. That was the problem with his mind palace. The residents _cheated_.

“I know that’s what you must feel,” she pressed, “but I can only help you if you completely open yourself up to me.”

“That’s not really my style,” Sherlock denied her.  Even inside his own head; even to a construct he’d pulled together as a mouthpiece for his own emotions from her profile photo and years of John’s offhand comments, infused with his own—far more extensive than hers—knowledge of John.

He couldn’t ‘open up’ any more than he could seal off this room entirely so that he could ignore it. Despite his best efforts to extend the walls all the way down to the floor.

But she was still missing the point.

“I need to know what to do,” he said, reminding her of her purpose. Short of Mary arriving with a note from the afterlife, she was the best resource he had.

“Do?” she asked.

Somewhere in Sherlock’s head would be a way to get through to him. All he had to do was find the way to tease it out.

“About John,” Sherlock said.

**Author's Note:**

> [This link about Ella’s gorgeous new 'office'](https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/68634/what-s-up-with-the-weird-therapy-room-in-the-six-thatchers) says exactly what I was thinking, with screenshots. NO WAY that is a real psychologist’s office. Beautiful room though.
> 
> Thanks as always to Ariane deVere's transcripts.


End file.
